Results tagged “jamesmarsden”

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend.

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this holiday weekend (all of these movies open today). Most Likely to Rule: I'm Not There - An "unconventional" biopic of Bob Dylan wherein six different actors play him at various stages in his career. Said actors include Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, and Heath Ledger. Also in the cast (but not playing Bob) are David Cross, Bruce Greenwood, and Julianne Moore. We could see how this...

What's new and/or interesting in Philly theaters this weekend.

After enormous amounts of hype, and a painful development process that lasted years and years, and seemed to involve the hiring and firing of pretty much everybody in Hollywood, the new Superman film is finally here. The creative team who ended up working on it are Bryan Singer as director (who's got the comic-book-to-movie props in his resume - albeit for the other comic company - having directed the first two X-Men movies), "unknown" Brandon Routh as Superman, practically unknown Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane, well-known Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor, and a bunch of famous folks rounding out the cast, including Parker Posey, Frank Langella, Eva Marie Saint, and even a computer-resurrected Marlon Brando. I was also pleased to note La Femme Nikita herself, Peta Wilson, in a small role. And hey, is that Cyclops as Lois Lane's boyfriend?! It is! It's James Marsden! That's just wrong. Marvel and DC shouldn't mix like that. It could cause some kind of...crisis.

“This is Shakespeare, not the Sopranos.” So says Diana (Glenn Close), at the beginning of Heights, critiquing a pair of Macbeth-modernizing acting students for replacing the traditional dagger with a revolver. The Scottish Play provides a leitmotif for the film, filled as it is with secret plots and pacts entered into by New Yorkers seeking power, opportunity, or pleasure. And while the story that follows features neither stabbing nor shooting, it is amply stocked with the emotional bloodlettings of three couples practicing or contemplating infidelity. Broadway diva Diana and her husband seethe under the restraints of their own “open relationship,” he seducing a new understudy while she appraises everyone who crosses her path with a predatory leer. Isabel (Elizabeth Banks) is approached by ex-boyfriends and new career opportunities while her jealous fiancée (James Marsden) worries that a new photography exhibition will dredge up his own past. The photographer (unseen, but looming spectrally over all the proceedings) has meanwhile sadistically deployed his current and choleric journalist boyfriend (John Light) to write a Vanity Fair profile about him by interviewing all his ex-boyfriends.

As each pursues one thread of the story, their paths jaggedly converge on the night of Diana’s birthday party. And while some of the secrets and lies are predictable, they are delivered with an excruciating malice that lends resonance to the film’s sour take on relationships. Others pass through their lives, mostly the collateral damage of the principals’ failed romances. While the primary mood is grim and elegiac, director Chris Terrio and writer Amy Fox have leavened the script with a sly wit, particularly from George Segal as the Rabbi counseling the interfaith couple of Isabel and Jonathan. Aside from a few trite observations about the passionate artistic temperament, embodied by a Welsh conceptual artist (Andrew Howard), Heights is a movie of many virtues. It is cleanly constructed, well acted and subtly evokes themes of voyeurism and violence of all kinds: emotional, physical and political. It also features the most elegant tribute to the post-9/11 New York skyline I have yet seen on film, during a quiet conversation on a lower Manhattan rooftop. Directed by Chris Terrio and produced by the late Ismail Merchant (of Merchant-Ivory fame), Heights is a thoughtful and occasionally wrenching essay on modern relationships. No, it isn’t The Sopranos and it isn’t Shakespeare either, but it’s well worth seeing for anyone who enjoys their summer movie violence delivered verbally, as well as by Batarang and Martian disintegrator ray. Heights is playing at the Ritz at the Bourse (400 Ranstead Street). This week's showtimes: 12:45 pm, 3:00 pm, 5:30 pm, 7:40 pm, 9:55 pm.